VICTORIES in Cardiff have been few and far between for Scotland down the decades. Victories of any sort in the Six Nations Championship have been hard to come by recently as well. Little wonder, then, that Wales are predicted to win today’s match at the Principality Stadium with something to spare.

The standard script, the one that most people expect to see played out in front of them, goes something like this. Scotland compete gamely and stay in the contest for 50 minutes or more, but then Welsh pressure begins to tell. Roared on by a raucous support, the home team impose themselves in the last quarter, perhaps adding a couple of late scores to take the winning margin into double figures.

The Welsh formula for achieving that result will be a simple one which combines ground and aerial assaults. Stuart Hogg, the Scotland full-back, will have a fair number of high balls to deal with, as he did in last week’s 15-9 Calcutta Cup defeat, but the more sustained offensive will be on the deck. The home pack will do the donkey work, Jamie Roberts will bludgeon and batter his way through the middle, and then, once the Scottish defence is stretched to the limit, wingers George North and Tom James will be deployed in a bid to finish things off.

Of course, for such a plan to work, Wales will have to win a substantial share of possession - something that Scotland, needless to say, have every intention of denying them. “Ball control will be crucial,” Jason O’Halloran, the Scotland assistant coach, said yesterday when asked where he thought Scotland could get the better of the Welsh. “And matching them physically.

“They’re a big, strong team who try to dominate you. We need to match that from the word go. Go forward and put them under pressure by maintaining a multi-phase attack, and also identify when we execute the skills to get the ball into space and running hard at weak shoulders. Pretty simple.”

Simple to say, at least, but harder to put into practice, as was shown against England. Scotland had chances to score tries, or at least to put sustained pressure on the English line, but failed to convert them, to O’Halloran’s annoyance.

“When we got in behind them we didn’t maximise the opportunities. That was the key lesson.

“If you release the pressure valve by turning over the ball, then you don’t score points. We had three good line breaks in the first half and we turned two of those over and got a penalty off the other one. We need to make sure we’re converting more of our line breaks into tries or at least three-pointers.

“The ball presentation wasn’t great. We were getting the ball trapped against our bodies. We need to push the ball out as far as possible so we get better access for the half-backs and get it as clean as possible.

“We just need to stick to our structures. When we get away from structures and individuals run off on their own it’s hard to support them. It’s about having confidence in the team and working together. The boys are aware of that after the review and I think they’ll be a lot better in contact this weekend.

“You need to recognise the kind of defence the opposition have. Wales have a blitz defence and that leads to upper-body tackling and trying to rip balls. Going into contact we need to drop our shoulders and get low, and make sure we’re looking after the ball aggressively, because they will target it.

“Just keep drilling our structures so that our guys understand their roles. One second where you leave somebody isolated so that they can give away a turnover - we have to get away from that.”

Getting those basics right is more than half the battle, because the longer Scotland perform a high level of competence, the more subdued the home crowd will become. But even if they do begin well, the difficulty for the visitors will be to maintain that level for more than half the game - far more, in fact.

In that regard, it was concerning earlier this week to hear Matt Scott, who misses out on this game because of a thigh-muscle tear, admit there had been times when Scotland simply did not look determined enough to hold on to a lead or to fight their way back from a narrow deficit. It is a point that Vern Cotter, the head coach, has tried to drill into the players.

“He showed us clips of Six Nations [matches] last year when we were within a score and we didn’t seem to want to get the ball back,” Scott said. “We just weren’t aggressive enough in our defence and clinical enough when we had the ball.

“That’s the biggest disappointment of [last] weekend: we aren’t learning from games in the past when we were in the lead or close to it and we couldn’t quite get over the line. That’s the mental side of it.”

O’Halloran hopes the squad learns from Cotter’s video analysis, and he also expects them to be motivated by having been written off. “Everybody likes to be challenged in that way,” he said. “If the team is worth anything they will respond to that challenge. I hope the character in our group will show through.

“For us the important thing is to continue to drill the structures and make sure they memorise everything inherently and instinctively rather than have to think about it too methodically. If you have to think about it, it takes an extra couple of seconds, and that’s when you’re under pressure.”